1. Technical Field
The present disclosure relates in general to the field of computers, and more particularly to the use of computer software. Still more particularly, the present disclosure relates to the synchronization of dissimilar databases in different systems.
2. Description of the Related Art
From a high-level perspective, a computer can be viewed as a collection of hardware resources that, under the direction of an operating system, executes software code to manipulate data. An exemplary form of such data is a table.
Oftentimes, two disparate computer systems need to coordinate updating copies of a same table in a synchronous manner. That is, a first computer system, which utilizes a first type of software, may update a table. In response to the first computer system updating the table, a second computer system, which utilizes a second type of software, needs to update the same table, which is stored the second computer in a different format, which uses a different protocol from that found in the first system.
An example of such a need to synchronize table updating is that found with an SAP™ system and a non-SAP™ external system. SAP™ is a well known Enterprise Resource Planning (ERP) software that integrates data from an enterprise's departments such as accounting, payroll, human resources, inventory control, sales, legal, etc. SAP™ has very specific protocols, one of which is problematic. Specifically, when a SAP™ system updates a local SAP™ database table, this update can be sent to a non-SAP™ table in an external (non-SAP™) system. However, if the external system fails to update the non-SAP™ table, the SAP™ system has no way of knowing this under SAP™ protocol. Thus, if the non-SAP™ system fails to make the proper update to the non-SAP™ table, then data in the SAP™ and non-SAP™ systems are no longer synchronized.